Towards a Technology-Enabled Environment of Care for Nursing Homes

In this paper, we report our experiences in customer validation on using a privacy-aware compliance tracking system (PACTS) to develop an environment of care for nursing homes that want to be more competitive in cost control, quality control and rating. As part of an entrepreneur training program called I-Corps@Ohio, which was sponsored by the Ohio Department of Higher Education, we conducted over a hundred face-to-face interviews with nursing homes and their customers in Ohio. The interviews suggested that PACTS can be used as a data analytical platform to improve nursing home operations to meet the demands of growing number of elderly people. We have formulated the following ways to improve the operation of the nursing home industry: (1) A privacy-protection registration mechanism that enables a nursing staff to register with PACTS, where it is used as a gamified training and service quality evaluation platform; (2) A PACTS-installed service that offers a tipping option for exceptional bedside care services available to residents and/or their family members; (3) An online nursing home hunting website that offers the most recent accumulated data collected by PACTS, which can be used to derive objective ratings for participating nursing homes.